#StargateEaW celebration! Open beta?! - Mod DB">
Hello dear community,
Today is a very special day for everyone involved in the StargateEaW project.
People who have read our recently updated history article will know that our project had its first release exactly 10 years ago! We has come a long way since Beta 1 which was released for Star Wars: Empire at War. Thanks a lot to everyone who is supporting us!
But what is the best way to celebrate this?
Answer: The team decided to have a major change in the release politics we agreed years ago to celebrate this milestone of our project.
As of today we open the gate to the StargateEaW open beta!
Wondering what kind of present you got there? Let us explain.
Basically the open beta is the public pendant to the closed beta we’re already running with our selected beta testers. This closed beta will remain in place to hunt down game breaking bugs and to have small size tests of new and experimental features. Once the most annoying bugs are resolved and a new feature requires some more input for fine-tuning we will release it to the open beta to gather your feedback. Afterwards the fine-tuned feature will be release to the current public version.
This means that the currently public version will still be maintained as the “stable” version of StargateEaW: Pegasus Chronicles for everyone who prefers to play a final product rather than a beta. Also this version will remain the main version of our project for which we dedicate our support to.
And why is the Stargate Modding Group doing this right now?
Times have changed. At the beginning of this project we were able to have a way shorter development cycle. Especially after the releases of the early beta versions we had the change to gather the feedback of you which helped us greatly in the development of StargateEaW. With each release the mod grow and got more stable which made the team quite happy and eager to keep up the development of versions as stable as possible. We realized lately that this focus on stable releases we’re having longer and longer development cycles with less chances to ask for feedback. With the open beta we would like to change that in a sense that we would like to move the development or our project closer to our community again.
So as stated above the development of a stable version of StargateEaW will still remain our primary goal but we think the open beta is a good middle ground between stable releases and the wish to acquire feedback more often.
Interesting…but what is the content of the open beta right now anyways?
For now the open beta contains the content of the stable public release plus the nearly complete version of Pegasus Prelude for everyone to test. This version is “feature ready” meaning that everything gameplay related is implemented. Also we fixed all the game breaking bugs found by our closed beta testers. However please note that the version of Pegasus Prelude in the open beta is of course still work in progress and that other bugs are still present including the following:
- The GC is prone to crashes. Save often!
- The Tau'ri tactical dashboard, GC space station and some other Tau'ri specific logos are still visible.
The target of this open beta test is especially to know if the balancing of the GC is alright and if we missed some bugs. Therefore we would like to encourage everyone willing to share bug reports, his opinion and ideas about the open beta and the current Pegasus Prelude version in our new open beta forums: LINK
While talking about sharing... All members of our community are free to share images and videos of the open beta in all places of the world wide web! The only thing we would like to ask for is to be always clear that you're sharing content of a beta version of our mod.
If you get stuck head over to our new wiki: LINK
Nice! How do I get the open beta?
The open beta will only distributed via our recently updated mod launcher to be able to update everyone’s local installation rapidly with changes.
Grab the new launcher via this LINK
Follow the below installation instruction to set up the open beta:
Open the launcher -> Go to settings -> Change the user mode from "Public" to "OpenBeta" -> press "Save"
Also check out the other additions which are coming to our launcher with this release: LINK
Enjoy the open beta!
Yours,
SGMG
Great news, congrats for the anniversary.
Thanks a lot! :)
Please let us know what you think about the open beta.
Awesome! :D
Sweet
What a nice surprise release - downloading now...
Can't wait for your feedback!
WOW Are the replicators in the gc meant to attack you? I just got rekt by them
And the ancients need at least 1 aurora at start to defend the middle of the map(Just my idea)
It doesn't take long before you get the Hippaforalkus. Once you have sent it for repairs to Taranis you got your first Ancient battleship for free.
Also planets that are at the front at start should have at least a level 1 station
Thanks for your input! On which difficulty are you playing?
Medium
But i lacked it on easy at some points too (the stations)
You also can't auto resolve the wraith queen fight
And Moros with dreadnought shuold have a better ability and stronger shields +15% should do it
And i want dreadnoughts to be buildable like you can build only 1 at some selected planets
I also can't move the ancient lady from lantea and many starter jumpers too
And the replicators should only be researchable after the aurora research otherwise you don't stand a chance
And easier and clearer station handling
!And more accuracy to city ship drone weapons!
Btw Arcturus rocks you let the big wraith fleet back there, and watch the world burn
The map was designed perfectly although i don't know who made it it just kills you that right at the start you usually withdraw forces from the middle to get laros and defend taranis
I'll say more after finishing with the wraith too I only tried the ancients
All of theese are personal problems and opinions
Thank you a lot for your feedback, XOriontheOneX!
A few comments:
- Could you elaborate which battle exactly you weren't able to auto-resolve? This should actually only be the case for the Doranda attack and the battle over Proculis.
- The "Ancient lady":D (Melia) and Jumpers cannot be moved because their ships do not possess a hyperdrive. But you can send a ships with hangar that will carry them along.
- I also like the Arcturus event. Glad you enjoy it too! :D
So the queen and some other units fall back from the wraith homeworld to Iratus Bestiola after i defeated them there even though i control the planet and it can't be auto resolved there
Thanks for the info about jumpers did not knew that
Also i have to update the launcher again everytime after i quit from it, not really annoying just you should know about it
Weird, the Launcher is not supposed to do that. Thanks for the Info.
I think i found the problem with the auto resolving
I think the AI tries to retreat from their last planet so (i dont know why) they can retreat to the only nearby planet even if its controlled by player but the weird part is: the planet stays mine and with my fleet i can auto resolve just the AI will always retreat and they have no planet to go so they stay there
This brings up a problem: the battle starter panel where you can choose if
you want to play it or auto resolve is always up.This means time is constantly stopped and can't get reinforcements there
And another strange thing is, even if i had a space station there the wraith fleet just destroys it as soon as it gets there not showing up as loss on any after combat scenes
And even though i control the planet the wraith can build a space statiom there
This is just WEIRd
Thanks for your report with the launcher update. It will be fixed soon!
Regarding your auto-resolve issue: If you start the battle the AI should be less likely to retreat their ships which should enable you to kill them.
Yep but a weaker machine cant handle a city ship a dreadnaught and auroras not talking about the wraith fighter swarms
Indeed, I fully agree XOriontheOneX about the Wraith Squadrons and all the units on the map.
The problem with the faulty launcher update has been fixed now:)
Yeah i see thanks for fixing it
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Okay, wraith campaign feedback part 1
-Even if i defend arcanus it shows up as failed even though i get the ship
-The location of large shipyards is unbalanced
-Lvl 5 station is too op, with no units stationed there it won in auto resolve against a 176 unit number ancient fleet with numerous auroras
-Heavy fighters and bombers are too weak, i rather have a hive than 8 fighters
-Queen too weak, could be fixed with two more heavy plasma battery
-I completed the Athos event but it said that i failed
-Orakis is impossible i lost 14 hives and the ancients had like 20 auroras on the map, i was getting 1-10 fps
-Attero satelites should be closer to spawn on lantea fight
-At lantea after destroying satellites the game crashes so i don't know what to do, i can't finish it
-Asgard event too hard your ships are too slow to get the beliskirners btw nice model for pegasus asgard ships
Also I started the wraith campaign today
Looks balanced as far as i can tell but it needs even more events even though it is (almost) entirely scripted
I don't know why but the ancient part of the GC was better in my opinion and i can't tell what could make the wraiths a better experience
If i have anything besides some crashes -what i entirely understand- i'll tell you.
Yes the Replicators are meant to ruin your Day, and do certainly go a good job to keep the player busy ^^
You can just not research them
;)
Indeed :D
Also, it will take a (random) amount of time before they are not only attacking the Wraith but also you.
For me it was lesser than 10 minutes
Or deal with them once you managed to control the Wraith hordes.
They attacked me after just a few minutes, maybe ten or so? That meant to be a thing?
So you can do that
The only problems I'm having are some crashes to desktop and I believe some of the descriptions on the space station are wrong, I press a button that says release next combat wave but it makes my fighters get back inside it, I'd appreciate if you guys could make a post talking about the stations and explaining the features. Other than that I can say I'm really enjoying the update.
That's a good idea.
Maybe we should add that info to the PP article in the wiki.
I'm very glad you enjoy the mod!
And its my pleasure to provide more information about my Ancient Starbase:
The original geometry of the Tower and big parts of the Texture were made by the user "SGA-3" (I think that is Chris Diston, not sure though).
I added the rotating hexagonal Rings and the rest of the vertical Station concept, with some help of my friend Leie Sistal.
I love Stations with cool rotating Rings, but it wouldn't make sense to have them rotating for the sake of artificial gravity because Ancients have better technology for that purpose.
So I thought it makes sense to rotate in order to move docking Spaceships into the right position:
The Ancient Station has 3 bigger fighter bays and 3 docking peers. If you use the "Dock_Ship_Hangar" upgrade ability and a valid Ship (= Ancient Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer or Transporter) is nearby the Starase docks it to the pier at position 1.
Once you dock the next ship the station automatically rotates the hexagonal Ring of level 2/3 to get a empty slot to position 1 for docking.
And you can use the "Rotate Clockwise" or "Rotate Counter-Clockwise" ability to choose which ship is supposed to undock: pointing at the one in position 1 at the front.
The Ancient Starbase Level 2 and 3 get a free Ancient Corvette from the Hyperspace as garnision unit docked to the Starbase if the player is no AI.
"Dock_Fighter_Bay" and "Undock_Fighter_Bay" are supposed to dock/undock one Heavy Fighter or Hevy Bomber, same as the "Dock_Ship_Hangar" ability. The Arms rotate away to make sure no spaceship blocks the entrance to the fighter bay. Sometimes if bigger ships are docked like Transporters, that blocks the rotation movement. CAUTION: I know there is a save/load crash bug if you try to dock a whole squadron of Heavy Fighter/Bomber instead of the single unit. I try to fix this in the future.
Once the Starbase reached level 5 you can build the "Ancient_Superlaser_LV_1", and you then seperately need to build "Fire_Ancient_Laser" in order to fire that laser 1x and to deal some bigger damage to nearby Enemy ships (won't do anything without a valid target). So you can use "Fire_Ancient_Laser" in battles as offensive ability.
The Ancient Superlaser can then further be upgraded to level 2 and Level 3, each level increases the damage points inflicted by "Fire_Ancient_Laser".
If the Starbase has lost the fire Hardpoints on one side of the Ring on level 3 the player can use "Rotate_Constantly" to tell the Starbase to rotate the ring AS LONG AS enemy ships are nerarby. If no enemy ships are nearby that ring will only turn for a full 360* rotation. This is useful to get the Hardpoint on the other side of the Starbase into fireposition!
Or to fire some Hardpoints that are ready to fire while the others rotate away and recharge for the next shot.
The "Power_to_Shields" upgrade works similar like the ship ability, but it requires at least a Ancient Corvette to be docked to the station in order to redirect some power from that Corvette systems into the Shield emitter of the Starbase. That will show the shield mesh of the Starbase for about 30 seconds and boost the shield by a tad.
Sometimes it makes sense to dock heavily damaged ships to the starbase in order to protect them under the shield umbrella of the Starbase. But don't forget to undock them before the Starbase gets destroyed or the docked ships will blow up with the construction.
And finally the player can choose to buy "Evacuation_Transporter". That spawns and docks a Evacuation Transporter into one of the Hangars. Once the Ancinet Starbase gets critical damage, some seconds before the Starbase blows up that transporter flees to evacuate all civilian personal on that Starbase. If the player manages to escape that small Transporter to the next bigger ship without getting it destroyed, the player earns a reward of 5000 Credits.
Ohhh, this is interesting... can't wait to try it all out. :D
Launchers normally fail (it's a location thing), but I did get it to update. Log reports this as a technical failure:
09.11.2016 08:24:16.92 - The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.
at System Net HttpWebRequest GetResponse()
at SGTPCLauncher Helper WebHelper OnlineFileExists (String url)
09.11.2016 08:24:16.94 - Error at receiving online mod version!
Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: input
at System Version Parse(String input)
at System Version .ctor(String version)
at SGTPCLauncher Helper VersionHelper get_OnlineModVersion()
When I played as Wraith on GC, I paused, but my income is rising while paused.
I can not answer your Launcher problem, you would have to wait for Locutus for this.
But regarding the income I can tell you that this is intended for the open beta as it show wether script which runs the gc is still running or if it crashed. This will be removed once a completely stable version is out.
Do you have any other feedback or thoughts you want to share with us?
At one point your launcher was not able to detect if there were any updates available. But since you managed to download eventually I guess it kinda sorted out itself. If you encounter further trouble with the launcher let us know!
Hit a few little 'hiccups', but nothing I would consider noteworthy.
Real problem is the language usage. Your pronoun use in particular is very bad, but all your language is extremely ambiguous. As I go through it in my head, I would guess that:
1- Most of you are die-hard fans (I mean, you are making this mod...)
2- What's a ZPM and why do the wraith want them? (Zero Point Module...but I forgot what role they had in the wraith war)
3- Wraith should AVOID direct confrontation UNTIL you have the ZPM. (I lost several times trying to 'punch' through the Lanteans fleet)
4- Consider a clear pre-campaign and pre-battle briefings
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
We are currently working on better translations. Hopefully we can patch them soon:)
Yeah, most of us are indeed real Stargate fanboys that know the series by heard. The ZPM played an important role for the Wraith because it was a superior power source that enabled them to produce a huge clone army they used to overcome the Ancients.
Regarding the pre-battle briefings, do you have any suggestion how this could look like in detail?
So I'm almost through the ancient campaign as far as I can tell, and here's what I have in things feedback.
As far as I can tell a few people were a bit confused about difficulty, I didn't necessarily find this instead I noticed as the ancients it's perfectly reasonable (And not even particularly hard) to win a conventional victory with a step by step advance. This is where the Replicators come in, they certainly spice things up by messing with you from behind your lines (Alas, it was not enough to stop the advance as I simply evaded them with a corvette and re-captured the worlds they took) however I never actually noticed any indication of when it was they turned upon me other than worlds suddenly turning replicator when the replicator fleet arrived. (The replicators for me didn't even launch a single proper attack on the wraith before they turned). As such it might be helpful to add a mission to purge the Replicators once they turn just so one knows what's actually going on.
Earlier I also mentioned that as the ancients, I was playing on medium difficulty, I could in the mid game pretty easily advance against the wraith going so far as to capture their original homeworld I dubbed 'Purged bug place' with barely half my fleet. Is this intentional? The ability of the ancients to win a conventional war with comparative from what I've been able to tell (I've not properly played the wraith yet but the lets plays seem to indicate that they've got a somewhat harder campaign).
Additionally, the wraith seem to magic ships out of thin air at times (For I was wondering how their hand full of remaining worlds easily outproduced me in every category at least ten times over), again is this intentional, does the AI even build ships in the same sense as the player?
Finally, there was one time which I genuinely got quite close to losing, this was because of the mission where Delphi vanishes leaving you with nothing but an Aurora as compensation. I found the inability to move ships or order them to do things in pause quite problematic here as despite my fleets having enough time to get there I had to spend so much time splitting the massive offensive fleet that the wraith overwhelmed the hand full of static defences I had in place. Is it possible to create a 'Slow down' button similar to the accelerate button in the GC?
Anyway, that's been my expreince so far. I'll gladly set off to continue my play through presently!
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback Reacon11!
Hey Reacon11,
Thank you a lot for such detailed feedback!
If you think that the Ancient playthrough is too easy you might want to pay "hard" a visit:) I agree that the Asurans usually don't cause too much damage to the Wraith as the engine seems to calculate their fleet strength weaker against them as against the player. When they turn hostile there is actually an even in place that should give you the task to get rid of the Asurans. But for some reason we don't understand it doesn't trigger in most cases. It is one of the very few event bugs left...
As for the magic ship spawns your observations are correct. While the Wraith AI is a regular AI which builds ships based on planet income and uses them within the typical EaW AI limitations we also support the AI with script-spawned raiding fleets that attack the player directly to immerse the feeling of their superior numbers and to increase their aggressiveness. If you take the clone base Arcanus from the Wraith however, you will notice that this will also affect the strength of their raiding fleets.
If you lose the Delphi during the evacuation event (which is actually based on the series and an explanation why the Atlantis team finds an Ancient outpost on Gonta) you will get the hero Wallus as an immediate compensation and the possibility to construct another City Ship - the Pride of Troy - later on. If that is worth is is up to you.
The game actually offers a slow-down function by itself. In the game settings there is the possibility to increase the game speed (same as the button does) but also to lower it.
Have fun with the Wraith campaign as well!:)
Fast way: Pre-battle loading screens can have text, maybe add something there?
Battle in Asteroid field:
This was the turning point for the wraith, up until now, they had merely been a nuisance to the Lanteans, but upon claiming a ZPM they were able to fight them on an even footing. With more ZPM's under their control, they will soon overwhelm the limited Lantean forces.
Objectives:
1) Command a strike force to cripple the Lantean ship.
2) Navigate a shuttle to the crippled ship. Beware Lantean Drone/Fighter craft.
3) Once the shuttle reaches the ship, a strike team will quickly retrieve the ZPM.
4) Ensure the shuttle reaches the EVAC point safely.
Bewarned, the Lanteans will not respond kindly to this attack on their fleet. We should expect a powerful retaliation, all ships are to be considered expendible. The ZPM must be successfully extracted to friendly territory.
Several notable issues:
1. I ran the compatibility check (again?). It insists that I don't have the RAM fix, even after I download it through the launcher and run it again.
2. You weren't kidding about crashing often. Once, I attacked Gonta and crashed during the battle. Another time, I attacked Gonta (with the Delphi in tow), won, and crashed in the middle of saving the game.
It occurs to me that another major EaW mod encountered similar issues - investigating on the forums for 'Phoenix Rising' should reveal the exact cause, but the gist of it is that the engine can't withstand the huge amounts of units and stuff in the game.
Seeing as the average battle in SG:TPC, especially in Pegasus Prelude, has ships firing ludicrous amounts of drones, the game soon reaches its limit. No fix has ever been found, but a workaround is to limit yourself to autoresolving battles and/or drastically reduce the amount of units and projectiles in a typical battle.
3. Pride of Troy has no apparent model or hardpoints in space combat. It exists in name only.
4. Delphi's shields are incredibly fragile while its hull is actually fairly decent. I think something's backwards here. :P
Thank you for the Crash Feedback Dalo, looks like we certainly need to do anything about these crashes due to performance limits.
"Pride of Troy has no apparent model or hardpoints in space combat. It exists in name only."
Thats Weird! You build a dummy code unit, but the actual Pride of troy code is inside of Unit_Space_Ancients_Cityship.xml.
It should be a fully playable Cityship.
A new launcher update has just been released that should (hopefully) fix your issue with the ram fix in the compatibility check. Let us know if you still run into trouble!
I can confirm your issue with the Pride of Troy. Will be fixed soon!
I have a problem both with open beta and the complete version of the mod . yesterday i played as ancients , the game crashed , it was late so i went to sleep. I have windows 8.1. When i closed the computer , there was a system update , and now, after the update both versions of the mod crash when i click start on the launcher. the mod starts to load and then it crashes. can you help me ? BTW the open beta is great , the effect of drone attack from the city ship is astonishing XD
"the effect of drone attack from the city ship is astonishing XD" Thank you for liking it. Unfortunately I was told to lower the drone effect down.
Hmm, did you tried opening the eaw exe in win xp compability mode?
And starting the Launcher as Admin.
That is why I always have my win updates disabled by the way.